


converting all your sounds of woe

by potentiallythiswillbegay



Category: bare: A Pop Opera - Hartmere/Intrabartolo
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Discussion of canonical character death, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Peter x Jason Week, a reflection of jason from nadia's pov, i was gonna make this cute then it went Sad, its the mcconnells okay they suck, mention of child neglect and emotional abuse, sibling relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:07:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26123215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/potentiallythiswillbegay/pseuds/potentiallythiswillbegay
Summary: For as long as she could remember, Nadia had seen Jason as a hero.(day two of peter x jason week: hero)
Relationships: Jason McConnell/Peter Simmonds
Kudos: 9





	converting all your sounds of woe

**Author's Note:**

> this was something i thought of on the train and wrote tonight a day late but for day two of peter x jason week: hero.  
> title is from act ii scene iii of much ado about nothing, and this is entirely unbeta'd as usual  
> (trust that i'd take peter x jason week and write a nadia-pov work)

When Nadia was growing up, the idea of a hero was pretty clear: A strong, usually white, typically blonde & blue-eyes man who saved the girl.

She was five years old, and called Jason a hero, and didn’t get why he frowned at first

Nadia spent a few years thinking about what her ideal hero should look like, listening to the other girls in church fawn over celebrities and classmates.

At eighteen, Nadia was fairly certain she couldn't give less of a shit about the idea of a hero.

As she grew up, Nadia grew quieter and quieter. She and Jason faced the words of their parents with silence and a nod, she played the cello over the sound of her panicked breaths, and became proud of how good she was at getting people to leave her alone.

She remembered calling her brother a hero all those years ago, and wondered if he remembered it too.

Jason was the golden boy of the twins, the McConnell family, their friends, and St. Cecilia’s. She called him such, he laughed it off, and she didn’t know what he was thinking.

Nadia remembered seeing Jason meet Peter, aged twelve. She had quietly observed her brother introduce himself to his roommate, and wondered if Peter saw him as a hero.

(She would have no idea that he really did, or how much, until years later. She didn’t know a lot about Peter and Jason, even if she had guessed some things.)

There were things she knew about Jason that no one else did, or at least very few people did, that she kept close to her heart.

Jason was absolutely a nerd and used to hide comic books smuggled from school under his bed where neither of their parents would look. When they were nine, he’d hide under a blanket on his bed with a torch and read them in the dark of night, wincing whenever the page turn was particularly loud, and would send secret smiles to Nadia the next morning when she would sneak him extra batteries.

He was allergic to corn but never declined the opportunity to hang out at the cinema with their friends, so she always noticed the faces he pulled as the smell of popcorn reached them. She only ever noticed Peter tease him about this as well.

He hated golf, despised all the lessons their father had paid for, and once ate a whole bag of popcorn to get out of a practice one week in December when they were thirteen. She had taken care of him after their parents left for a trip, and she teased him for five seconds before they planted themselves in front of the television and ate ice cream until they were both sick.

He was an idiot, but he was her idiot.

He’d let her walk into his room without a word and lie on his bed in complete silence after she had spoken to their mother, hugging her if she ever asked.

Despite never participating in the plays, he’d always come to opening night and cheer during her and Peter’s bows.

He wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot, but even as they grew up, he remained her hero.

When they hit their junior year, she noticed him changing slightly. He still joked with her, but his patience was shorter, and he stayed quieter in front of their parents. He joined more activities within the school, and whenever he had free time, he would either be locked in his and Peter’s room or studying in the library.

Whenever she asked him, he’d claim something about looking good for colleges, and wanting to keep their parents happy. She started to catch onto his secret looks with Peter, and she hated feeling like she wasn’t the most important person in his life anymore.

It was a selfish feeling, she knew that, but she played her anger out on the cello for hours that night, and went to bed angry when making fun of Ivy didn’t work either.

Over the first months of his new behaviours, she became aware that he was trying to maintain his stupid image of being the ‘golden boy’, and she got angry with him. For following their parents, for being so fucking unattainably perfect, for looking so effortless.

(It was never effortless, she knew that as well as she assumed Peter did, from the rare time she’d hear him panicking in his room over breaks, too anxious to go comfort him herself.)

In their senior year, Jason was Romeo, the school’s golden boy, and remained the image of an unreachable hero in her eyes.

He made mistakes, and she witnessed the effects of every action, even if she didn’t know what truly had happened until months later from talking to Peter.

It was easier to get angry at Ivy than to change her image of Jason.

It was easier to glare from across a room than think things through.

It was easier to act cold towards everyone than try and figure things out before they fell apart.

She learned too late that he was absolutely in love with Peter, his past actions and secrecy given meaning by Matt’s anger and Peter’s confession.

She learned too late that he was just as hurt and traumatised from their parents as she was, he had just constructed the image of perfection she had helped maintain.

She learned too late that they’d never get the chance to properly talk and get through everything he held too close.

In the months after graduation, she, Peter and Ivy talked a lot about him. She and Peter, in particular, would sit in his bedroom and stare at the ceiling as music played, listing things Jason used to do that they found annoying, endearing, or (as it so often was) both. They’d lie side by side on Peter’s bed, initially his bedroom at home, and later his dorm at Berkeley, and talk. 

Jason was her hero, and a part of her mind knew that he always would be to her. He was her older brother in all but time (even though he still was, by twelve minutes), and she looked up to him. 

She remembered saying to Peter, a week after graduation as they stared at the peeling glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling, that Jason never saw himself as the hero he was to the two of them. Peter had laughed at the cheesiness of it, as he wiped another tear away, and said that Jason needed his own hero, but was left isolated by everything he had been raised to believe in and trust.

Neither said it, but both were thinking that the church should’ve been there for him, exactly where Father had failed him.

After a few months, the conversations moved to their current lives with the occasional mention of Jason, and Nadia learned to move forward.

Never quite moving on, but moving forward.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on [tumblr](http://wlwillex.tumblr.com/) or with my [simon vs/bare crossover](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25571281) that i don't stop talking about


End file.
